Vex seemed stunned. “No, that’s impossible.”
With dark clouds moving in ominously close, the light in the room faded quickly, leaving only the lights on the buildings punctuating the darkness. They were facing away from me, so I wasn’t sure if they saw me or felt my signature in the midst of their battle.
Vex struggled, oblivious to bones cracking and muscles tearing. His face was pressed sideways so he couldn’t bite into Ram’s shoulder. He kept trying to twist away, and he expended inhuman strength to flip them over. But Ram’s feet locked into his legs, keeping him from finding the leverage he needed. Vex was powerful after so many centuries, but Ram was thousands of years old and that much stronger. Ram also clearly knew a thing or two about shields.
“I’ve . . . felt you before,” Vex choked out.
Ram hooked his feet into Vex’s hips to keep him from slipping away again. “It’s true. I lured Bedlam into kidnapping me off the street one night—in the persona of a harmless Sicilian boy. But instead of taking me himself, he gave me to you and Glory, so I could feed you. I let Bedlam lock me up between your boxes—those iron-bound coffins you and Glory had lived inside from the moment you were born. You both reached your arms through the holes, grasping on to my legs. You were near starved, kept alive only to preserve your essence until Bedlam needed it. I fed you both well before I broke the link on the chain and set myself free.”
Vex struggled harder, but he couldn’t budge Ram. The energy he was bleeding was starting to weaken him. His voice was strained from the head lock. “Glory told you that. She’s been working with you. She sent you to stop me from launching the Revelation.”
“Remember how I pulled the long iron pin from the hinges on the side of the box and opened it to find you first? The lid blocked us from her sight. I smiled at you and reached out my hand to help you. I was afraid you were going to attack me and I was going to have to reveal that I was a demon in order to fight you off. But after a moment, you took my hand and let me pull you up. You were blinking around at the room, and you were so shaky, you couldn’t help me take out the pin on the lid to Glory’s box. When I opened it, she leaped out like a wild cat. But she bounced off me and scurried into a corner. I think you were as surprised as I was.”
Vex let out his breath, as if he couldn’t doubt anymore. “I had seen only glimpses of that room through the hole: the fresco on the wall of a woman reclining on a sofa eating a banquet; piles of grapes; kneeling slaves presenting platters of roasted boar. We were being stored there, meat for Bedlam to consume.”
“Yes, and when Bedlam saw that I had gotten loose and came in to investigate, you two bludgeoned him to death.”
“Yes . . .”
“But you didn’t take his essence.”
Vex’s voice was fainter. “We agreed it was best to never speak of it. But it’s affected everything we did. We protected ourselves, surrounding ourselves with our offspring, preparing for his return. But he never appeared. I used to sometimes wonder if it was Bedlam out there causing the disappearances. Yet if he had lived, surely he would have taken vengeance on us.”
“You two were better than Bedlam. The best thing about you was your détente with Glory. You’ve proved cooperation begets prosperity for both demons and humans. But for the sake of greed and power, you were ready to throw that all away. You intended to impose chaos and superstition on the world again, warping the natural flow of society by promising humans immortality.”
“No, I understand now. Let this be the first step in our negotiations. I’m willing to work with you, and with Glory, too. Tell me what you want.”
Vex’s strength was waning now, and his struggles were increasingly easy to subdue. I didn’t think it was an act to lull Ram. He had been draining off Vex’s energy as hard as he could for a while now. Vex’s signature was weakening right in front of my eyes. I couldn’t turn away from the awful sight.
“Think of this as Judgment Day, Vex. I’m tallying up your sins. The people you killed. The harm you inflicted. You were convenient for me, keeping your line in check. But you’ve lost control of them. Two hundred years ago no demon would have touched Allay if that was your order. Now I wonder if you have a full count of your own line.”
“Shock’s Petrify is the latest in my line. The last one before that was Slam. Was it you who killed him last month? But I admit . . . I could keep a better eye on my people. Your people, actually.” He gasped a few times, trying to catch his breath. “You’re our progenitor, Ram. We’re part of your line. You deserve to hold your rightful place among us.”
Ram sounded sickened. “If I wanted that, I would have taken it long ago. I’ve done nothing but pay for my useless pride, my stupidity in fighting Bedlam until everyone was dead. I’m complicit in the death of my own beloved progenitor. Nothing you could give me can change that.”
The energy was pouring out faster now, as Vex’s shields finally dropped. Ram soaked everything up as quickly as he could, swelling even bigger. He began to transform in small ways, trying to bleed off the excess energy, changing his hair color in rapid succession, growing his chest larger, his biceps bulkier, then back to normal again.
“Let me try,” Vex whispered. “Let me try to serve you.”
He was softening, slumping in on himself. Ram had to tighten his arm to keep hold as Vex began to compress inward. His chest caved as his skin shriveled, and his arms and legs began to draw up. It reminded me eerily of Dread. My own urgent need called out to the core exposed at the heart of Vex, only a last few drops of energy remaining.
The essence of his life was beautiful, sparkling like an enormous diamond, casting rainbows into my eyes. I took a step forward. I couldn’t have torn myself away for anything. Vex’s essence had been honed to a heightened brilliance over the centuries—alluring, hypnotic, irresistible. . . .
“I gave you life when I freed you from Bedlam,” Ram whispered. “Now I take it back.”
Ram drew in the essence that kept Vex alive, and absorbed it into himself. It slammed into him; though no bigger than his fist, it looked as if he had swallowed a blimp. It swelled inside of him, the power of life.
“No!”
Vex let out a final breath, a moan of bewilderment.
His body quickly shrank in on itself, growing more intangible. Slowly the clothes collapsed onto Ram, and his arms weren’t holding anything anymore. A long, thin form hung in the air, curling and collapsing, growing smaller by the second. Tendrils of smoke rose as it rolled into itself, disappearing with an audible pop.
There was a bad smell in the air, like burned oil—the unforgettable stench of dead demon.
18
It broke the spell that had held me frozen. Was it Ram’s mesmerizing voice that had kept me standing by as he killed Vex? What kind of strange powers did he possess?
I hadn’t done anything to try to stop him. I was complicit in Vex’s death.
Ram turned, his expression filled with anguish. “I wish that hadn’t been necessary.”
He buried his head in his hands, swaying where he sat as if his ears were ringing. He had just absorbed a prodigious amount of energy. Even through his powerful shields, his signature was leaking out. It felt as if I were standing in a wind tunnel.
He stood up, dragging Vex’s empty clothing off him. Bits of dust and dirt that had been clinging to Vex’s body sifted down—ashes to ashes. . . .
Ram was glowing; a pearly luminescence from Vex’s core emanated from him. But there was something more: He was pulsing.
Pulsing like Shock right before she gave birth.
No way
. . . “Are you going to split in two?” I blurted out.
He turned around, with a faint look of surprise, but he was too far gone to reply. Keeping my distance, I watched as he struggled to shake out Vex’s old clothes and pull them on. He shifted his guise to mimic Vex’s persona of Tim Anderson. His sloppy brown hair fell into his eyes, obscuring his vision, and his limbs grew thin and rangy.
He staggered as he got his legs through the baggy jeans, wincing in disgust at the state of the clothing. But he could hardly leave without clothes on. Frankly, I was surprised the guards hadn’t arrived already. I wondered who Ram had impersonated—buck naked—in order to get inside Vex’s loft without raising the alarm.
Ram had to stop and grab hold of his stomach, much the same way Shock had done, as if trying to hold himself together. I could feel the cracks in his shields spreading wider, and could feel his deep reserves and the raging torrent that Vex’s energy had created inside of him, as if a horse were about to burst out of him at any second.
I owed him nothing. In fact, I hated him for trying to kill Shock, for the lies he had told me.
But I couldn’t let Ram fission in front of the church employees.
So as he moved toward the door, I went with him. I wasn’t afraid; I doubted he was capable of attacking anyone at the moment. He had never tried to kill me, though he’d had plenty of opportunities.
Maybe I’d been too useful, like a Trojan horse, letting him get close to his victims.
He grabbed the skateboard leaning next to the front door, while I took one last look back. I knew what had happened here would rock the demon world to its foundations. For good or ill, Vex was dead.
I didn’t say a word to him. And he didn’t seem capable of speaking through his clenched jaw. I wanted to sympathize with his pain. But he wasn’t Theo.
When we reached the door to the vestibule of the private elevator, Ram lifted his face to the camera. But he was struggling too hard to hold his guise and it didn’t recognize him as Tim Anderson. Swearing and nearly overwhelmed, he ducked away, trying to pull himself together.
I took a chance and lifted my face. The door swung open, indicating that Vex hadn’t rescinded my free pass throughout the complex.
I couldn’t feel Dread in the room beyond with the cage. The door didn’t have a handle on the outside, so there was no way for me to get in to check on him. After watching Ram absorb Vex, I was sure I had done the right thing. Only a demon could kill that easily.
I summoned the tiny elevator, as Ram slumped against the wall. He was shaking as if he were suffering from heroin withdrawal, banging the skateboard into his legs. He kept wiping the sweat from his forehead and neck, but he was perspiring so badly that his hair was dripping. It was so undemonlike, I still had a hard time believing he wasn’t human. I remembered how flushed and moistened I’d been after sex with him, after I had absorbed his energy without even knowing it.
When the elevator came, I punched the basement level, hoping to avoid the guards at the front desk. I hoped my guess was correct and there were no cameras, because I failed completely at acting nonchalant. I jittered around, avoiding Ram, who could hardly stand up himself.
When we reached the bottom and the elevator dinged open, I was braced to face Montagna and her goons, like last time—or Goad and his horde. Ram held the skateboard ready to use as a weapon. I was prepared to break whatever I had to in order to escape this time.
But there was nothing but cinderblock walls and the dull roar of a distant furnace burning trash.
Ram weaved his way toward the glowing red sign of an exit door. I ran ahead and pushed it open with the crossbar, but from the interior of the stairwell it was locked. On the floor above were two doors at right angles to one another. The one directly ahead was a wide, steel double door with an arm at the top that shut it automatically.
The way out. I ran up and gave a sigh of relief when it opened onto the street. The heavy clouds made it dark; maybe the sun had already set, as well. There were a few people hurrying by in the rain, hunched under umbrellas and hoods. The bridge loomed in the growing darkness at the end of the street.
It took Ram more time to climb the steps, but I remembered how I had helped him up to my apartment when he was stalking Shock and how good his hard stomach and heavy arm around my shoulders had felt. Now I didn’t want to touch him. I made him climb up alone.
When he reached the top, he was pulsing even faster. “I can . . . hardly see, Allay. I have to get to cover now.”
A guy ran past, his jacket over his head to ward off the rain. There were more running footsteps and exclamations of distress as pedestrians had to leap the growing puddle at the corner of the curb.
As much as I wanted to let Ram fission right on the church’s doorstep, I couldn’t let my own feelings get in the way. I couldn’t risk Ram outing demons to humanity this way.
I needed to find someplace private before he made a spectacle of himself. It seemed that I was going to be a demon midwife once again.
A few blocks down to the edge of the river, I found a long stretch of chain-link fence against the massive stone base of the bridge. The waterfront street ran underneath, along the holding pen for delivery cube trucks. Since the bridge was split into two roadways, rain sluiced down in the middle, as well as on either side.
Ram reverted to his Theo guise. Hunched over his stomach, he was slogging through the water-filled gutters, holding on as hard as he could. Flashes of pulsing, pearly white light shot out of him. I was sure people could see it, but everyone was rushing to get through the driving rain, their heads mercifully down.
When we reached the fence under the roadway, I glanced around to check that nobody was nearby. Then I pulled on the gate, straining until the metal bent outward. There was enough of a gap that I could squeeze through. Ram went down on his knees and crawled in after me.
He didn’t get far from the gate, weaving his way over to lean against a panel truck. We were both soaked to the skin from our dash down to the river, and the sound of pouring rain and wet tires rushing by on the bridge overhead drowned out everything else.